Tender Courage Craniosacral care optimizes a baby’s transition into a new body by igniting their resilience and, more specifically, aligning their life force within the midline of the body. Life force, which is the very heart of resilience, may have been misplaced during a stressful prenatal period, a difficult or fast birth or a slow, medicalized transition period, among other things. Craniosacral care is ideally received by both birther and baby throughout the entire prenatal period to help release generalized stress and constriction in the pelvis. This creates a more ideal womb environment and clear passageway for birth, setting the baby and birther up for the resilience needed to make a smooth transition all around.
Within the womb, we all developed according to a ‘blueprint’ for optimal health. Through the process of birth, we began to encounter ‘conditional forces’, such as the pelvis (especially if there were constrictions within our birther’s body or if we were in a unfavorable position during descent), forceps or vacuum extraction. Conditional forces become ‘trauma’ when our systems’ ability to return to the original fascial flow state, or blueprint, is overwhelmed. Our bodies are designed to adapt to traumatic experiences through resilience and the concept of homeostasis, especially during the intense passage of birth. It is when this resilience is overwhelmed beyond capacity that trauma sets into our system and our body is unable to ‘right itself’. These experiences can lodge within our nervous system. Throughout life we come into contact with all kinds of conditional forces: a car accident, a fall, an emotional blow, an emotionally traumatic childhood experience(s). If our system is again overwhelmed and our resilience is further dislodged, these impacts can layer within our body over time and create compensation patterns that can impact our entire body on all levels.
For a newborn or young child, having these protective forces acknowledged and released soon after birth (or after a fall, injury or trauma) can help to lessen this layering effect and can help to maintain resilience and optimal life force within the system. Specifically, it can help and/or prevent many difficulties, such as feeding issues, torticollis/plagiocephally, birth trauma, NAS (infant addiction and withdrawal) and developmental delays.
For a birthing parent, receiving craniosacral care during pregnancy can reconnect one to the innate vibrancy of the original blueprint for health, regulating the nervous system and relieving stress in a very deep way. This helps to increase the resilience of the BabyBirther dyad as a whole and has direct impact on Baby’s adaptation to this body and this life. It can also relax the Birther’s pelvis and release constrictions that may impede an optimal position or decent during labor. Postpartum, it helps with realignment of the pelvis and internal organs and will help with the somatic co-regulation of the BabyBirther dyad. Additionally, it aids in overall postpartum healing by optimizing life force flow which can then be used efficiently where it’s most needed. In this way, a nourished, centered and regulated human can emerge from the fourth trimester as the person and caregiver that this little one needs most… and that this old world itself needs most!
